# Weird things on the highway
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-things-on-the-highway/122025
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [August 2, 2002, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-things-on-the-highway/122025 "2002-08-02T15:35:14Z")
**Posts on this page:** 14
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)
#### Post date: [August 2, 2002, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-things-on-the-highway/122025/1 "2002-08-02T15:35:14Z")
> [@](#):
>
> [Milwaukee Journal Sentinal](http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/jul02/63111.asp) 31 July
> …in Chippewa Falls, it got so hot Tuesday that a traveling load of yeast-filled pizza dough expanded, breaking out the back of a semitrailer truck and creating a 25- to 35-mile oozing, intermittent blob on Highway 29.
>
> “We had everything from bread-loaf-size droppings to some that were about half the size of a car,” said Sgt. James Barnier of the Wisconsin State Patrol, District 6 in Eau Claire.
>
> “They used snowplows, shovels and pitchforks to get it off highway,” Barnier said.
---
### Author:  [@d12](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/d12)
#### Post date: [August 2, 2002, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-things-on-the-highway/122025/2 "2002-08-02T16:02:21Z")
This one isn’t streets, but it sure is sad nonetheless
[http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=320&ncid=320&e=2&u=/ibsys/20020730/lo\_kprc/1272046](http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=320&ncid=320&e=2&u=/ibsys/20020730/lo_kprc/1272046)
> [@](#):
>
> An 18-wheeler crashed Tuesday morning, crushing its cargo of beer and spilling it onto the street.
---
### Author:  [@d12](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/d12)
#### Post date: [August 2, 2002, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-things-on-the-highway/122025/3 "2002-08-02T16:03:54Z")
streets = on the highways :smack:
---
### Author:  [@Arwen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arwen)
#### Post date: [August 2, 2002, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-things-on-the-highway/122025/4 "2002-08-02T23:05:12Z")
In the last few days, there have also been french fries and blue jeans dumped on the road. I am looking for the story, it was in one of the “odd news” sites, but it is eluding me just now…
---
### Author:  [@Arwen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arwen)
#### Post date: [August 2, 2002, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-things-on-the-highway/122025/5 "2002-08-02T23:20:26Z")
GOT IT:
[http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/news/8202\_95.html](http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/news/8202_95.html)
---
### Author:  [@racer72](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/racer72)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2002, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-things-on-the-highway/122025/6 "2002-08-03T01:56:29Z")
While driving a vanpool van to work one warm afternoon, a smell began to fill the van. At first I though someone farted. No, everyone farted. It was really smelling bad. Traffic came to a crawl and about 15 minutes after the first whif, I found out why. A truck from a rendering plant dropped it’s load in the middle of I-5 just north of Seattle. There were dead dogs and cats. The insides of many animals. Just pieces of animals. Lots of cow heads missing the lower jaw. Did I mention it all smelled real bad.
Then the driver of a car a few vehicles in front of me jumped out of his car and ran to the side of the road and started barfing. Left his car in the only open lane. After 5 minutes, I stepped out of the van and asked the guy in the car in front of me if we should move the guys car. Just about that time Mr. Weakofstomach climbs back in his car and drove away. I got back in the van and it was off to work. We cleared the spill and the smell began to ease. But it never went away. I got to work and could still smell it. Driving home that night I could smell it. I could smell it even after I got home.
When I awoke the next morning my wife informed me that she threw one of my shoes outside. I went out and retrieved the shoe and smelled it. PU. It was a running shoe and had exposed foam on the sides of the soles. Apparently I had stepped in some of the animal waste and it soaked up into the foam. Ruined a perfectly good pair of shoes and they smelled too bad to even make good lawn mowing shoes.
---
### Author:  [@The\_Wrong\_Girl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Wrong_Girl)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2002, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-things-on-the-highway/122025/7 "2002-08-03T02:13:32Z")
Wow…I can’t beat **racer72** ’s story, but once, my boyfriend ran over a mattress that someone had chosen to dump in the middle of a highway in South Carolina.
---
### Author:  [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2002, 9:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-things-on-the-highway/122025/8 "2002-08-03T09:47:33Z")
While heading west to London on the 401 I smelled roast chicken, and twenty minutes later passed a flaming truck which had been transporting chickens.
Then there was the day the 401 in Toronto was closed for a round-up of cattle from a tipped transport.
More than once I have come across drunks sleeping on the road in northern Ontario. (One was run over by a truck a couple of blocks from me a few days ago.)
Once I was in a small Nissan pickup which was loaded with eighteen kayaks, eighteen kayakers, their paddles, pfds, etc., a driver, and a dog. A transport heading the other way pulled off the road to stare at us.
---
### Author:  [@flowers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flowers)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2002, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-things-on-the-highway/122025/9 "2002-08-03T16:29:20Z")
I often see shoes on the side of the highway. Not pairs of shoes, mind you, just single shoes.
---
### Author:  [@TVGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TVGuy)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2002, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-things-on-the-highway/122025/10 "2002-08-03T16:32:32Z")
I guess it’s not all that wierd on a highway to run across a spare tire in the road.
But a semi-truck spare tire? Fully inflated and on the rim?? Sitting smack in the middle of the left lane of I-90 in Idaho at 4:30 in the morning??? And I _ **DIDN’T** _ die when I ran over it at roughly 60 miles an hour!!!
You can read more about it toward the end of [this page](http://www.mistered.com/2001-trip-w.html) on my website.
---
### Author:  [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2002, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-things-on-the-highway/122025/11 "2002-08-03T18:36:23Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by racer72 \*
> \*\* Just about that time Mr. Weakofstomach climbs back in his car and drove away. \*\*
That would be a great user name. Although bafring while doping is generally frowned upon, I believe.
---
### Author:  [@tigergirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tigergirl)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2002, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-things-on-the-highway/122025/12 "2002-08-04T13:17:24Z")
Our hire car _found_ the drive shaft and gear box of a dump truck after it had dropped out coming up a hill. My leg also _found_ the plastic cover off the airbag after the explosion when we hit the truck stuff at 65 mph.
Then we were found on the side of the road by a lovely highway patrol man who let me stay locked in the back of his police car with all the flare guns and stuff while we waited for a new hire car.
---
### Author:  [@cornflakes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cornflakes)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2002, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-things-on-the-highway/122025/13 "2002-08-04T16:35:59Z")
A truck dumped its load of iron oxide on the highway here a few years ago. The local news made a big deal about how the fire department’s Haz-Mat unit was cleaning up the hazardous waste. Gee, I never knew rust was so dangerous…
---
### Author:  [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2002, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-things-on-the-highway/122025/14 "2002-08-04T18:28:21Z")
Well, you know, rust never sleeps… 😃